Forest Green

If walls could talk, they’d tell you about the emotions you embed in them. They’d tell you about the joy and sorrow, laughter and tears that flood into them with no outlet.

The wall was in the spare bedroom of a small house in the suburbs. A couple had purchased it a few years before and had mostly used the room for storage up to that point. Occasionally, they blew up an air mattress and her parents or his brother would sleep over. But not often enough for them to even put curtains up on the window. The wall was lonely. Ignored. Neglected.

Then one day, the couple began clearing the storage out of the room. Her belly pooched out under her t-shirt, and she rubbed it with such love and adoration. The wall basked in her happiness, her glee. The husband came in behind her, wrapped her in his arms, and stroked her belly tenderly.

The wall was painted forest green, the rest cream. Gold curtains strung up, framing its window. On a Saturday morning, they assembled a white crib hiked up to the highest setting. A month later, a white dresser was added to the opposite wall. The woman brought in a basket of tiny clothing and lovingly folded them into the drawers. She stacked diapers on top.

The man and his brother positioned a rocking chair with a stool angled out from the corner next to the dresser. She sat in it and rocked gently back and forth, her belly double what it had been. While she rocked, the men unrolled a gold striped rug on the floor, turning it this way and that as she directed.

She came in nearly every day. Placed her hand on the railing of the crib. Opened drawers to study the tiny contents inside. She trailed her fingers over the stacks of diapers, the containers of wipes.

As her belly continued to expand, she added more and more decorations. Brightly colored paintings of lions, giraffes and other roamers of the Sahara. Miniature overalls and coats hung in the closet. Empty frames to hold positions for photographs to come. Large gold letters over the crib spelling out the name Eli.

The man brought in a white bookcase that he leaned next to the closet. She dragged in a chair and perched on the edge of it, a paintbrush in one hand, a palette in the other. She doodled tiny animals along the edges. The next day, he carried in bags of board books with exaggerated pictures on the covers. Fluffy, soft stuffed animals. Toys made for tiny hands. She delicately arranged everything on the shelves. A giant stuffed giraffe was placed next to the crib, overlooking the mattress. They covered the mattress together in a white waterproof cover, then a gold sheet. A stack of blankets on one side.

The next time they came in the room, she cradled a baby in her arms. He was swaddled tightly in a blanket. His little eyes sealed. His mouth pinched out in a kiss. She placed him in the crib while the man tugged the curtains closed over the window. They stood there awhile, just staring at him.

The wall had never experienced such drastic switches between peace and intense stress before. The woman began spending hours rocking in the chair, wrapped in a bathrobe, the little boy in her arms. His mouth fastened to her breast. The only sound him suckling and snorting in equal measures. Sometimes he cried for long periods of time, one of his parents pacing back and forth, patting his back, whispering soothing words in his ear. They’d lay him on the floor and dangle toys above his face while his hands squished into fists at his sides. Every night when the sky grew dark, the man would rock the boy with one of the many books from his shelves in hand. Murmuring the words to him. Then he’d hand him off to the woman for one last feeding before bed.

One night, no crying came. The boy lay in his crib, swaddled tight in a blanket, his face toward the golden letters of his name. He stayed silent all through the night. Nobody came in to change a diaper or offer sustenance.

Morning dawned, and the door ripped open, the woman scampering into the room with wide eyes and panicked breathing. She moved to the crib, grabbing for the boy even as she muttered to herself under her breath.

The tears were immediate and fierce. She cried like a child, her sobs loud and gut wrenching. She held the boy to her chest, rocking the two of them back and forth as she pleaded and begged. The man came in. He fell to his knees in front of her, his hands groping for his son. Before long, tears exploded down his face. He wrenched back up to his feet and fled the room. She switched to pressing on the boys chest alternated with puffing breath into his mouth and nose. A few minutes later, he was back with paramedics in tow. All three left with them. The wall waited anxiously for them to return. Fear and panic and anguish mixing into its fibers.

The man and woman came back in a couple days later. They didn’t have the boy with them. She sat in the rocking chair, completely still. Her face a blank mask. She stared at the crib until it grew dark outside. The man came in and held her in his arms. Then they left again.

It was a long time before they came back. The curtains stayed shut over the single window. The crib stayed empty. They left the door to the rest of the house closed. Sometimes the wall could hear them moving about. Sometimes weeping. But they stayed away. The wall knew what had happened. It had seen the blue of the baby’s lips. The sorrow in his parents’ eyes. The wall had never felt such devastation. It wished it could cry to release some of the pain it would have to hold inside for the rest of its existence. It didn’t know how to bare such a burden. It longed for the time of loneliness and neglect. At least then it hadn’t felt such pain.

Then one morning, the man came back in. He changed the sheet on the bed, took the stack of blankets out of the crib. He attached a camera to the wall, angled toward the bed. He laid down a special cover over the sheet. And the woman walked back in. A smile on her face for the first time in weeks. The boy in her arms, his hands grasping at the tiny hairs fallen from her ponytail around her ears.

The man grinned when he saw them. He stroked a hand down the back of the boy’s head.

“Welcome home, Eli.”

The wall breathed in the relief. The joy. The second chance they’d all been given.